My original thought was that it helped out the Draco Malefoy or Harry Potter characters in some way. I then thought it prevented the holder for being lynched or Night Killed. I like your idea that it’s the tie-breaker, too. I also wouldn’t put it past the Moderators to have something themed that doesn’t do anything, just for kicks/generate discussion.
The only use I saw from it was that if it gets passed to scum, they’re likely to keep passing it amongst themselves… but that would be hard information to obtain and/or leverage.
Dead:
**
Omi no Kami – Antonin Dolohov(Death Eater – no special powers)** Drain Bead – Harry Potter(Order of the Phoenix - Occlumens and Chosen One) NormalPhase – Severus Snape(No Chosen Allignment) Red Skeezix – Lord Voldemort(Death Eater – Leader and Occlumens)
**LittlePlasticNinja – Alastar Moody (Order of the Phoenix – no special powers)
Rysto – Albus Dumbledore(Order of the Phoenix - Vote Charger/Protector – Had to choose one per Day/Night cycle)
Chronos – Horace Slughorn(Order of the Phoenix – no special powers)
LittlePlasticNinja – George Weasley(Order of the Phoenix – Loving Brother)
Meeko – Fleur Delacour(Order of the Phoenix – no special powers
Zeriel – Remus Lupin(Order of the Phoenix – no special powers)
ShadowFacts – Aberforth Dumbledore(Order of the Phoenix – no special powers)
HardlySanguine – Sirius Black(Order of the Phoenix – exceptional wizard – 4 one-shot powers) **
…and there goes the last of my waning enthusiasm for this game. Let’s just lynch someone and get the game over with, OK? It’s too frustrating to actually try to play when stuff like this keeps happening.
Here’s where I stand. I continue to assume story’s not an option, and I know I’m not.
I don’t think Chip is scum.
That leaves Inner Stickler, Wanderers and Guiri. I always kind of think Wanderers is scum (although it’s not a short list, the people I always think are scum), but at the very beginning of the game I got a very strongly town vibe from the way he went after Omi, particularly (I was the most confident that he was town of anyone, actually, which is the reason he got the snitch). Since then, no strong feelings either way. No strong feelings about Inner Stickler, either.
Guiri, on the other hand, I generally do not think is scum. He’s generally all up in that shit. It seems to me that he’s done much more of a finesse job this game, not so much probing as… floating. A question here about this, a question there about that, and always finding the answer acceptable. Always, in retrospect, a townie being questioned, but never aggressively; just wondering, you know. It’s a good way to stay alive. The way this game started, in retrospect, it’s what scum would have had to do. I think Zeriel was right about that. Get a vote in, just not the third one, stay visible but not really, and get out of town’s way.
I think the above is an excellent argument, strengthed ever so slightly by my modestly strong belief that Jimmy is Town.
I am disinclined to vote for Chipacabra at the moment.
I am similarly unlikely to vote for Stickler. Here’s why: prior to toDay’s modkill, I was suspicious of Stickler for his late-Day vote yesterDay. But this was largely predicated on the fear that Stickler was trying to protect HardlySanguine. Given Hardly’s revealed alignment, I can’t see any kind of Scum logic to Stickler’s vote. The two primary candidates on the block were both Town. As Scum, Stickler could have voted for either one and achieved a solid pro-Scum outcome, without drawing undue attention to himself. Instead he placed a one-off vote for a Townie - a Townie that then died in the Night, guaranteeing that attention would come Stickler’s way. There is the WIFOM concern that the above is exactly how the Scum hoped we’d think, but that would have been a huge risk versus just having Stickler vote safely for a leading candidate. Stickler’s vote for Shadow thus, it seems to me, shows zero Scum motivation. It was too late in the Day, too noncomittal by half… but not Scummy to me.
That leaves me with Guiri and Wanderers. I’d be OK with either going down toDay.
Guiri has one vote at present; Wanderers has none. I am going to read up on both in the next few days and place a vote for one or the other.
Also, what the heck is up with the Snitch? It’s driving me batty.
I can only think of two functions that would make any sense as far as the actual plots of the books. The first is that, like in Quidditch, there’s at least one player with a “Seeker” aspect to his or her role, and capturing the Snitch is worth sixty billion points if he or she manages to get it. Harry and Draco, I think, were the two main Seekers in the books. I supposed initially that this might be a decent third party win condition.
The other is that the Snitch was the thing they handed out to all the contestants in Goblet of Fire, and that Harry had to unlock to hear a message about one of the feats in the tournament, so there’s a precedent for it being a mechanism to pass secret information along. I was hoping for this one, obviously, but it looks like that isn’t what it does.
I just thought of a third one - and, uh, spoiler alert, I guess. At the end of the last book, Harry’s carrying the Snitch that does the “I open at the close” thing. It lets him talk to dead people once he’s ready to go down to the forest and. You know. Go down. (Hey, that’s what happened to HardlySanguine!) Maybe the Snitch does something if you die when you’ve had it the previous day.
Oof, so much pressure.
Ok, I’m town, story’s a mason. Pretty sure Jimmy is town.
That leaves Guiri, OaOW, and Inner.
Story, your argument about Inner is persuasive. Also, I think this game has been characterized by apathy to a large extent. I think a lot of moves that have seemed scummy have just been people not focusing on the game.
Between Guiri and OaOW, I don’t have much to choose between them. I had some town pings for Guiri, but some of that was just me getting confused about post order. Which Guiri pointed out. Argh.
Well, if there ARE 2 scum, then whittling the choices down to 3 at least gets odds on my side.
Right now, I’m a tinge more suspicious of OaOW, so vote One and Only Wanderers
NETA: I have no idea what’s up with the snitch either.
I started this game while Malazan was still going on, I really expected that game to be over 2 weeks earlier but as it turned out, it went on and on. Playing two games, and being in Spain for the World Cup, certainly affected my level of participation in the early Days of this game. I’m guilty of being reactive instead of proactive.
However, I don’t think my playstyle in this game can be judged based on previous games simply because Days 1-3 were dominated a poor vote by a scum player and Day 4 had (what appeared to be) a clear case of PIS, both of which encouraged reactive participation. I usually do a lot of vote analysis and rely heavily on the color for leads but, so far in this game, the only votes that have stood out were the Day1 non-voters (now reduced to Inner) and OaOW’s 4 third votes - plenty of WIFOM there.
As for my questioning, I’m not sure how you can be confident saying “Always, in retrospect, a townie being questioned, but never aggressively; just wondering, you know.” as there’s still scum remaining. In relation to “A question here about this, a question there about that, and always finding the answer acceptable.”, if a response answers the question, I see no reason to comment further. If the response does not appear reasonable from a Town point of view, or if there’s no response, I will use it in a case against that player at the appropriate time. I rarely vote a player for a single ping but once a few of them add up I’ll form a case.
As for my votes, I don’t think they represent simply voting for the sake of voting. I voted Omi a couple of minutes after OaOW and by doing so broke the tie with Chipa. On Day 3 I was initially reluctant to vote Red by association alone but as soon as I saw his claim, I placed my vote.
As for the snitch, I suspect its function was related to its “flesh memory” and could only be activated by a seeker, possibly sharing the seeker’s alignment to all players who subsequently received it.
